Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Friday September 18, 2009 @05:19PM
from the really-inboard-motor dept.

TechReviewAl writes "Alexey Ponomarev from the University of Augsburg in Germany and colleagues have revealed the blueprints for an electric motor built with just two atoms. The motor would have one neutral atom and one charged atom trapped in a ring-shaped optical lattice. The atoms jump from one site in the lattice to the next as they travel around the ring and placing this ring in an alternating magnetic field creates the conditions necessary to keep the charged atom moving round the the ring. A team from the University of Glasgow in the UK in fact built one of these quantum motors back in 2007, which they called an optical ferris wheel for ultracold atoms. 'The next step, say Ponomarev and co, is to attach the motor to a nanoscopic resonator, such as a spring board or nanomushroom, and make it vibrate. If you can do that, they say, you'd be powering a classical object using a quantum motor.'"

I've seen an article, where authors said that it is possible to encode quantum information in "holes" in photon flow. For example when you have steady stream of photons, each emitted exactly after the same period, you can actually encode information in photons which should be sent in some cycles, but they need not be really sent. They stated at the end that quantum physics is so strange that a quantum computer which doesn't really work is the best one: it completes calculations and returns real results but because it doesn't work - it doesn't make errors.

"In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum [wikipedia.org]

What makes you think something has to spin both ways at once to be quantum?

Blueprint of two atoms? What, two fuzzy dots next to each other? How many arrangements can you have with two dot like parts? Without RTF, I'm assuming other atoms are involved, despite what the summary indicates?

You're right, having opposite characteristics of one quality doesn't make it quantum, but more correctly, if you can divide it (or rather, break it apart, or split it), its not a quantum. Since atoms can clearly be split, ipso-facto, buppity buppity boo. This is an "atomic-sized" motor, I guess. Still pretty cool.

An Optical Lattice is a complicated array of lasers that create a egg carton like potential for the atoms (the atoms interact with the lasers via the Stark shift iirc). The idea is that the atoms then get "trapped" in the minima of this potential [well, they are still tunneling and all that].Via the wavelength of the lasers and their intensity one can control "depth" of the potential wells and the spacing of the lattice, which is quite nice, because you get essentially a solid state system where you can cha

I suspect a few more atoms were used for the lasers that generate the optical containment and the device that applies the magnetic field and whatever was used to cool those two atoms to near zero Kelvins. Sounds a bit like a quantum physicists' retelling of stone soup [wikipedia.org].

They didn't say the whole system was two atoms, they said the motor is two atoms. The motor is the component that turns a non-mechanical energy potential into mechanical motion. The cooling system, the device that produces the magnetic field, etc. are no more part of the motor than the gas tank and radiator are part of the internal combustion engine.

I suspect a few more atoms were used for the lasers that generate the optical containment and the device that applies the magnetic field and whatever was used to cool those two atoms to near zero Kelvins.

Well okay, but on the other hand a 4 cylinder engine involves more parts than just those 4 cylinders -- some of those parts even being of a cylindrical nature! "4-cylinder" engine has more than 4 cylinders, wtf?! And while for a liquid-cooled engine the radiator is an essential component, you don't normal

"it turns out that a team from the University of Glasgow in the UK actually built one of these quantum motors back in 2007, which they called an optical ferris wheel for ultracold atoms."
Yes there is a device according to the article! note the word "built".

I suspect an oil rig, a refinery, a transport truck, and a highway system to deliver the oil, and an oil distribution infrastructure were all part of your car motor too. Because without those it's just a hunk of twisted metal.

I hope this one day scales up to car size. The cops would be able to tell I was speeding on the freeway, but have no idea where I was. Or they would know exactly where I was, but have no idea if I was speeding. HUP FTW!

Some day, when technology has advanced to the point of optimizing machines to use every last atom to maximum efficiency, tricks like this will be neat.

Thing is, our post-singularity successors won't be amused by this "two atom" claim - you have to use up lots of atoms to hold everything in place and create the conditions necessary. If the "lattice" weren't there, the atoms wouldn't act like a motor. The fields from the lattice atoms are what create the necessary conditions.

It's not "how atom-efficient can you make the system" -- after all, individual atoms are inconceivably cheap -- it's "how minimal of a motor can you create". (Although if it's using a quantum-mechanical effect, the fewer the atoms involved, the easier.)

There are a finite number of atoms in our solar system. Getting much more mass than what is already here will be incredibly difficult (unless wormholes are possible). So some day technology will be advanced to where every atom needs to be in the right place doing the right thing.

Developments like this are why I think emphasis on conservation at the expense of research into cheap and clean power generation is misguided. I hear a lot of talk from environmentalists about getting people out of their cars. The real effect of those policies will be to get poor people out of their cars while rich people will continue to enjoy the material advantages that personal transportation offers.

I'd rather research cheap and clean power sources and keep poor people in their cars. That's social

Very big of you, but why do you think cars are a good place to be ? Your last sentence can be read from the other aspect too. Let's keep the poor people in their cars while the rich get better transport arrangements.

I have a hate thing with cars at the moment. It seems they are more addictive than heroin, and kill more people. Yet if you try talking to a car owner you rarely get any sense if it means restricting their rights to drive. I've heard arguments from people suggesting that the best thing for the c

Here is a link to the paper that discusses this. It's an interesting read for anyone who cares about physics and theoretical motors. Article here [arxiv.org] Happy physics reading. PS: The links are in the top right.

How long before some lab hack claims to have made a nano scale "free energy" machine.....

Of course if you could find some way to make nano machine that could turn latent heat energy into electricity you could theoretically make a device that could make cold air and electricity out of warm air......

Build a couple hundred million of these and we could keep the arctic region cold as ice and supply the tropics with plentiful electrical energy....

As I said before on similar occasions, those are only calculations on the feasibility of making the atomic motor. As much as these calculations can be difficult, the actual experimental realization is even more complicated. Think for example in the challenges in making the ring shaped optical lattice with atomic precision, while maintaining the atoms cold enough (usually with laser pumps).
Only at that point I will be really impressed, and actually start thinking on how to integrate it with more complex mo

Let me give you an analogy: consider a container in the shape of half-a-donut, filled with salty water. Let's put a nonconductive barrier in at one point and place two electrodes on either side. Apply a voltage to the electrodes and ions will start moving through the water, sodium to the negative, chlorine to the positive. Although the ions are moving, we don't call this contraption a "motor". You could try to hook something up to the moving ions (good luck!) and try to move it, and if you succeed in this t

I don't mean to be flippant but I can't think of any practical application for this motor that isn't somewhat confounded by the requirement for the lasers and the magnetic field generator... TFA seems fairly proud that they've come up with this thing but doesn't really tell us what good it does.

I mean, does it have some massively superb output per unit size? Is the amount of motive energy it creates so great that it massively outweighs the amount of energy put *in* to the system by running the lasers and th